Alumni Events

The Tina Keng Gallery is pleased to present Chen Chun-Hao: Once Upon an Otherworldly Realm, the first solo exhibition of the artist in three years. Chen is known for his mosquito nail painting that emulates ancient landscape with small headless pins, a modern industry product, to conjure a visual effect that reinterprets Chinese ink painting. This exhibition is comprised of his classical “Transcendence,” as well as the latest “Spherical Heavens” and “Flat Earth” series.

Backseat Boulevard is a continuation of Jao’s interest in historical remnants and their reproduction in modern-day society. In addressing these issues, the artist unfolds different interpretations of history, questioning the established, official versions produced by the nation-state and media. This exhibition comprises three works, including Taxi (2016), which debuted at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in November 2016. Adopting a documentary style and a cinematic language, the video chronicles the conversations between the artist and cab drivers as they took him around Taipei to various locations that significant historical events took place, mapping the hidden contours of the geographical, historical, and ideological landscape of Taipei. The second piece is a series of watercolor works on paper through which the artist contests history, examines how history is being perused or traded, and weighs aesthetics against morality. Another piece is a video installation that grapples with the changing state of symbols and icons by documenting the process of a shrine being fenling from Japan and reconstructed in 2015. Fenling, or shared spirit/power, denotes that the power of the enshrined god was taken from a more powerful one in another shrine.

Outside of art circles, the artist CHI New-York goes by the name CHI Kai-Yuan. Juxtaposed against his more renowned nom de plume, this unfamiliar name has the appearance of a secret code to the artist’s private life. This eponymous exhibition takes the name “CHI Kai-Yuan”, a proper noun yet unencumbered by projected meaning, as the title of this 2017 solo exhibition. The featured works reveal a constant cycle of memory and craft in his personal experience, and are a reconsolidation of his individual artistic expression. CHI New-York simultaneously transitions into his role as artist in the cultural arena while he attempts to use himself as a vehicle of documenting the Other in a “mutual vehicle” in reciprocal response to the Other. The documentary photographic style approaches the realism of events and objects, while various technologies in the installation capture personal sensory experiences at different junctures.

Coming from the concept of love and relationship, I invited ten pairs of lovers - who also are artists - to collaborate. Many decades ago, there were a group of people decided to build their homes at Treasure Hill, and they lived here with their loved ones. Treasure Hill was actually a living space, and now it is an ocean for artists to create.